While A2 Hosting’s plan seems more expensive at first glance, it’s worth pointing out that the A2 Hosting plan allows unlimited websites, whereas the InMotion Hosting plan only supports two websites.

InMotion Hosting does also offer an unlimited plan, but that’s not what our test data applies to.

InMotion Hosting Was A Little Bit Faster In Our Tests

Whenever we write a hosting review, we always use the exact same configuration on our test site. This allows us to compare performance times across different hosts under similar conditions.

Basically, that means we can show you exactly how fast both of these hosts loaded the exact same website.

Let’s start with A2 Hosting. We ran our test site through Pingdom and it loaded in 1.25 seconds:

We also ran it through Byte Check to test the time to first byte, where it scored 91 ms:

So how did InMotion Hosting compare? When we ran it through Pingdom Tools, our test site loaded faster at just 842 ms:

When we put it through Byte Check, it loaded in an identical 91 ms:

A2 Hosting

InMotion Hosting

Pingdom (Page Load)

1.25 seconds

0.842 seconds

Byte Check (TTFB)

91 ms

91 ms

The verdict? InMotion Hosting was a little faster. But honestly? Both hosts performed pretty admirably for the affordable WordPress hosting options that they are.

Both Hosts Offer Quality Support That’s Easy To Access (But InMotion Hosting Was A Little Faster)

When we tested both hosts’ support teams, we were able to quickly connect to a helpful operator over live chat.

While our chats, unfortunately, don’t show timestamps, we were able to connect to an A2 Hosting rep in under 3 minutes (even though it was late at night during Thanksgiving weekend):

For InMotion Hosting, we got our response within just a couple seconds:

Both hosts also offer 24/7/365 support via:

Phone

Live Chat

Email

Honestly, both hosts offer above-average support for this price range, so you won’t go wrong with either. But if we had to break it down, we did get a slightly faster response time at InMotion Hosting.

Both Hosts Offer Free SSL Certificates

In July 2018, Google will start branding all sites running on HTTP as insecure. That’s why it’s absolutely essential that you move your WordPress site to HTTPS.

Thankfully, both of these hosts offer free SSL certificates that you can easily access.

A2 Hosting gives you an option to install your Let’s Encrypt certificate during the checkout process:

And InMotion Hosting gives you a simple toggle inside your dashboard:

Speaking of dashboards…

Both Hosts Use cPanel With The Paper Lantern Theme

Both A2 Hosting and InMotion hosting use cPanel for their dashboard. And both run the newest cPanel theme – Paper Lantern.

That means there’s not much meaningful difference between either with respect to dashboards.

To give you an idea of how similar the dashboards will be, here’s the Backup Wizard tool in A2 Hosting:

And here’s that same tool at InMotion Hosting:

Both Hosts Offer Preinstalled WordPress

If you’re a beginner, you’ll dig that both hosts make it super easy to install WordPress.

A2 Hosting lets you specify this during the signup process:

And InMotion Hosting also gives you a similar option when you sign up for your hosting account:

A2 Hosting vs InMotion Hosting: What’s Different?

So far, there have been a lot of similarities. That might leave you wondering – “what’s different between A2 Hosting vs InMotion Hosting?”

Here are some of the biggest differences that we see:

A2 Hosting charges extra for priority support, even on the higher tier plans.

InMotion Hosting requires you to pay for at least 12 months upfront, whereas A2 Hosting will let you pay monthly (though you’ll pay a higher price per month when you do it this way)

The InMotion Hosting plan that we tested limited you to 2 websites (though InMotion Hosting does have plans that support unlimited websites)

A2 Hosting vs InMotion Hosting: What Other People Say

Because you’ve only gotten our opinion so far, we wanted to open things up and see what the greater WordPress community thought about these two hosts.

While it’s not super scientific, you can see in the poll below that, at least in the WordPress Hosting Facebook group, A2 Hosting seems to be a bit more recommended:

It’s worth a reminder, though, that this survey is a better indicator of popularity, not necessarily performance.

A2 Hosting vs InMotion Hosting: Which Should You Choose?

A2 Hosting and InMotion Hosting, along with SiteGround, are three of the most popular cheap WordPress hosts with power WordPress users, so I don’t think that you’ll go wrong with any of these options.

If you do need unlimited websites, A2 Hosting’s plan still offers good performance at an affordable price point. And you can always consider one of InMotion Hosting’s general business plans for unlimited sites.

So – slight edge to InMotion Hosting based on our testing, but you really won’t go wrong with either option in this comparison.

Colin Newcomer

Colin Newcomer is a freelance writer for hire with a background in SEO and affiliate marketing. He helps clients grow their web visibility by writing primarily about digital marketing, WordPress, and B2B topics.